The Relationship Between Overweight and Obesity, and Sick Leave: a Systematic Review

Objective: To investigate the relationship between overweight and obesity and sick leave.

Design: Systematic, qualitative review.

Literature Search: A search in diverse databases was performed. Studies were considered as relevant if they were longitudinal in design and investigated the relationship between overweight and obesity and sick leave.

Data Extraction: The methodological quality of the studies was evaluated with a quality criteria list. To draw conclusions, a best-evidence synthesis was applied.

Results: Thirteen studies were included. Four out of seven found overweight to be a predictor of long-term sick leave, whereas the remaining three showed a positive trend, but did not observe significance. Of the five studies investigating the relationship between overweight and short-term sick leave, inconsistent results were shown. Seven out of eight studies investigating the relationship with long-term sick leave found obesity as a significant predictor of long-term sick leave. In contrast, there were inconsistent results between the five studies examining the relationship between obesity and short spells of sick leave.

Conclusions: Although this review found inconclusive evidence for a relationship between overweight and sick leave, a clear trend was discerned in that overweight was a predictor of especially long spells (>7 days) of sick leave. As regards obesity, there was strong evidence for a positive relationship with sick leave because of the consistent finding that obesity was a significant predictor of long-term sick leave.